The keyboard apparatuses in the prior art, for example, a computer keyboard (used for computer apparatuses such as a desktop computer, a notebook computer etc) or a push-button telephone keyboard, the characters or symbols (including, for example: English alphabets, Mandarin phonetic symbols, operational symbols, etc) on the top surface of their keycaps are etched by the technique of plastic shell radium carving. Nowadays, the layouts of the commonly used computer keyboards can be divided into five categories: the US specification (103 keycaps, those used in the US, Taiwan, and Mainland China belong to this category), the European specification (104 keycaps, those used in Europe (including the United Kingdom) belong to this category), Brazilian Portuguese specification (106 keycaps, those used in Brazil belong to this category), Japanese specification (109 keycaps, those used in Japan belong to this category) and Korean specification (105 keycaps, those used in Korea belong to this category). Among these keyboards, not only the number of keycaps are different, the shapes of certain keycaps (for example, the enter key) and the arrangement and the layout of the keycaps are also different from one another. Not even to mention, among those keyboards belonging to the US specification or the European specification, the characters (or symbols) etched on the keycaps of those keyboards respectively used in the US, Taiwan and Mainland China, or those countries in Europe are not exactly the same, which increases the complexity of this matter even more. Furthermore, the costs of keycaps manufactured by the technique of plastic shell radium carving are relatively high, so manufacturing many different kinds of keycaps can be relatively costly.
On the market, there is a keyboard apparatus using an outer cover to cover the plural main bodies of keycaps. However, the outer cover is attached to all the keycaps of the keyboard such that when a user pushes down a specific keycap, this keycap will be pulled and drawn by a portion of the outer cover covering those keycaps adjacent to this keycap, which causes the texture of the keycap to degrade when the user touches each of the keycaps while using the keyboard. Thus, how to improve the configuration of the keycap to relatively decrease its costs, to improve the texture and appearance of the keycap are important aspects for development in the field.
Keeping the drawbacks of the prior art in mind, and through the use of robust and persistent experiments and research, the applicant has finally conceived of a cap-covered keyboard apparatus.